Free Jazz Music

Free jazz and the related kind of fashionable jazz broke thru into an open space of "free tonality" in which meter, beat, and formal symmetry all vanished, and a range of World music from India, Africa, and Arabia were melded into an intense, even religiously happy or orgiastic form of playing. While rooted in bebop, free jazz tunes gave players much more latitude ; the loose harmony and speed was judged controversial when this approach was first developed. The bass guitar player Charles Mingus is also often connected with the fashionable in jazz, though his compositions draw from numerous styles and genres. The very first big stirrings came in the 1950s, with the early work of Ornette Coleman and Cecil Taylor. In the 1960s, performers included John Coltrane ( A Love Ultimate ), Archie Shepp, Sun Ra, Albert Ayler, Pharoah Sanders, and others. Free jazz quickly found a foothold in Europe in part because musicians like Ayler, Taylor, Steve Lacy and Eric Dolphy spent extended periods in Europe. A particular Western european modern jazz ( frequently incorporating parts of free jazz although not restricted to it ) did very well also thanks to the emergence of musicians ( like John Surman, Zbigniew Namyslowski, Albert Mangelsdorff, Kenny Wheeler and Mike Westbrook ) concerned to develop new approaches reflecting their nationwide and regional musical cultures and contexts. Keith Jarrett has been outstanding in protecting free jazz from feedback by traditionalists in the 1990s and 2000s.